


Bound by Blood

by ScriveSpinster



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar
Genre: Black Wings Absinthe, F/F, PWP, Rough Sex, dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-30 18:36:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17833964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScriveSpinster/pseuds/ScriveSpinster
Summary: A woman with a fascination for dreams and stories, a monster hunter who has too many of both, and a question better left unanswered.Written forthis prompt meme. Prompts wereambition, shadows, dream





	Bound by Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Dubcon warning is for sex under the influence of Black Wings Absinthe, as provided to someone who has no idea what Black Wings Absinthe does by someone who knows _exactly_ what Black Wings Absinthe does.

“You should be careful,” your friend the monster hunter says. She’s the one who pulled you from the river, the first time you dived too deep and found your way back alone – found you on the banks, she did, all spattered with mud and blood, and dragged you back home for a bath and a cup of tea, never a question of payment. And she’s the one you stumble home to in the wake of one more revel, with dreams still bittersweet on your tongue and your head still reeling. She shakes her head brusquely, dabs a smear of honey from your cheek with a clean kerchief, and says, “Things that are beautiful, alluring, they’re like that for a reason.”

What she means is that this city wants to eat you whole. But she smiles as she says it, and you can tell that she’s half in love with the place too, teeth and all. So you indulge her concerns, the entire litany of _you will die unmourned in an alley if you do not watch your back, and rats will use your teeth for bullets and your corpse for target practice, and won’t_ that _be a delight to wake up to,_ until she runs through the last of it and falls silent. But you can tell how her hands want to linger, as she brushes your hair back from your face and sets your clothing to rights. Your time in this city has taught you to recognize hunger in all its forms, and beneath the peligin hue of her eyes, there are darker waters still. She pulls away – spare, austere, in the warm golden lamplight. You catch her wrist and pull her back, and she lets herself be caught, and drawn closer.

She could, if she wanted, break your hold. She could kill you in any of a dozen inventive ways, with knives or hands, or simply throw you out the door or the second storey window for your presumption. She seems to search for words instead, and settles on, “You don’t owe me anything.”

“You really think,” you say, laughing, “that I keep coming back here because I think you’re _owed_?”

You lift a hand to her face, feel her shiver as your fingertips brush her cheek and the corner of her mouth, and you say, “It’s not just because I want your stories, either.”

It’s her turn to laugh, and shake her head at your audacity as she steps away, but she lets you stay. And she gives you stories – of lightless hunts through claustrophobic tunnels, the arc of the harpoon at the moment it leaves the hand, the cold flesh and bitter blood of zee-beasts eaten raw. You’ve seen more of her now, you think, than perhaps any other, and certainly more than any other who’s never taken up the hunt. Enough to know that there are tales she isn’t telling you, too, and enough to let it go for now.

“There’s one I’m after,” she confesses, later in the dark with her thin blankets wrapped around you both. Her body is lean beneath your touch, more scar than skin; her voice is rough, and it hitches when you slide a hand down through the wiry curls between her thighs and just cup her there, hot against your palm. “It will devour me, but I mean to fight until the end.”

You don’t speak yet, only press your fingers up inside her, curl them slowly and rub your thumb down over the hard nub of her clit, listening to her breathing change from even to harsh. Her inner thighs are slick, her face angled towards you, and her hands grip the sheets as her hips rise to your touch in helpless rhythm. She hisses something from between clenched teeth – maybe a plea, maybe only a small, desperate sound – and every muscle in her body goes taut as you bring her trembling to the edge of her control, and over. And when she falls back, when she finally lies quiet against you, then you let yourself ask: “What’s it like, chasing down your own destruction?”

She pulls away again. Cold air slips between you. Then a match, flickering briefly, and then a candle – foxfire green, revealing her in gradations of shadow. You can see the sharp outline of her collarbones, the sloping curve of her breasts, and you can see that not all her scars have healed.

“You really want to know?” she asks, and there’s a tightness in her voice that you haven’t heard before, a tangled knot of want and warning.

“I really do,” you say. “All of it. I want to know everything.” You can hear the eagerness in your own voice, and for a moment you feel very foolish, like some bright-eyed Surface naïf all drunk on fairy tales. Shadows play over her face as she nods – a shift in her expression, a decision made. She rises from the bed to rummage in a locked cabinet, and returns to you with something clasped tightly in her fingers.

“Here. Drink.” She presses a flask into your hands, thick black liqueur roiling in clear the glass. You take it to your lips, tip it back, swallow. 

“You’ll dream of flying,” she says. You dream of blood. 

And you dream of _her_ , in fragments and flashes surfacing from an ocean of darkness: the tangle of sheets around you, her skin and her sweat, the taste of copper as you close your teeth on her shoulder and bite down hard. Your mind is full of cold wind and lightless places and hunger, and there are no stars here but false ones, but still they shine as you race through the empty night. Somewhere distant, you fall upon your prey, tear it open with your teeth and feast, and here, your hunter arches beneath you, her fingernails digging into your hips, her voice raised in a wordless cry. She could kill you. You could kill her. Instead, you fall together, your legs twisted up with hers and her hands buried in your hair. You grind down hard against her thigh, and for a moment her scarred skin between your legs is almost as real as the wind and the void howling in your ears, and her blood in your mouth more real than both. There’s a name she whispers, her breath hot against your throat, that might or might not be yours. It’s hard to say, when you might or might not be yourself, but the sound of it pierces like Saint Teresa’s spear, low and deep in your belly. She calls you _monster_ as her fingers find the heat between your legs, calls you friend and traitor and beloved, and you in turn are everything she needs.

When you come back to yourself, your mind is quiet, your body wrung out and aching, still shaky from the aftershocks of pleasure. And your hunter friend is sitting primly at the edge of the bed, watching you in silence. Her expression would be unreadable, but for the tight-drawn line of her mouth – severe, resigned. She thinks you’ll want to see no more of her. 

“You understand now?” she says. Her dark eyes flicker down the length of your body, catching as her hands had on softness and shadowed places. She swallows hard, and looks away.

“That’s your warning,” she says. “We hunters, we can’t be trusted either.”

She’s right, you know. Her demonstration of it was purposeful – but you’re good at ignoring warnings. You’re good at leaping into fire and coming out unscathed, and you know she’s hoping you’ll take your leave now, and lift guilt and temptation from her shoulders when you go. But you don’t owe her anything, and she owes you, if nothing else, at least the freedom of your own damned choices. So you don’t leave, nor curse her, nor demand an accounting you know she’d willingly give.

You kiss her, and taste blood – hers, yours, it hardly matters. Both of you are still alive.


End file.
